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DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR 

FRANKLIN K. LANE. SECRETARY 

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE 

STEPHEN T. MATHER. DIRECTOR 



THE PAINTER AND 
THE NATIONAL PARKS 



ADDRESS :: By WILLIAM H. HOLMES 

Head Curator. National Gallery o( Art 

DELIVERED AT THE NATIONAL PARKS CONFERENCE 
AT WASHINGTON. D. C, JANUARY 3. 1917 




WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
1917 



5 



D, of -)- 

JAW 2' 19 n 



THE PAINTER AND THE NATIONAL PARKS. 

By William H. Holmes, Heud Curator, National Gallery of Art. 

It gave me great pleasure to install in the large room of the Na- 
tional Gallery the collection of paintings brought together for this 
occasion in illustration of the wonderful scenery of our national 
parks. It is for the most part a sane exhibit although not wholly 
free from the pathologic manifestations which characterize the so- 
called modernist movement of to-day. 

I would call especial attention to the works of Moran, Bierstadt, 
and Hill who, with Church, are the great exponents of American 
landscape art. The genius of these men alone has risen to heroic 
heights enabling them to grasp and present on canvas the greatest 
subjects which the continent affords. Following close upon the 
footsteps of these masters are Laurence, Parshall, Butler, Rungius, 
Ufer, Leigh, the Powells, Groll, Potthast, Daingerfield, Peyraud, 
Babcock. Dunton, and others whose works, shown in this collection, 
are worthy of the admiring attention of the public. 

When I came to the Smithsonian Institution 45 years ago Thomas 
Moran was exhibiting in the main hall of the institution his great 
painting of the Yellowstone Canyon which now hangs in the United 
States Capitol. To-day he is at El Tovar, on the south rim of the 
Grand Canyon of the Colorado, still at work, true to his early love 
and adding steadily to his marvelous record. He is the master par 
excellence of the canyons, the plateaus, and the mountains. His grasp 
of the great subjects and his knoAvledge of form, color, rock struc- 
ture, vegetation, and every phase of atmospheric effect are marvelous. 

The painting of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, shown on 
the east wall of the gallery, is his masterpiece — a work which insures 
his place as the first painter of our national scenery, if not indeed, 
the greatest landscape painter that the world has produced. I have 
climbed the sculptured walls and slid down the sulphurous slides of 
the real canyon and studied the subject from all points of view and 
under all atmospheric effects and find this work a wonderful inter- 
pretation in its reality, beauty, and poetic expression, yet presenting 
with the utmost faithfulness the infinity of detail which character- 
izes the original and which escape the brush of all others who have 
attempted the subject. 

Bierstadt's " Mount Whitney," on the west wall of the gallery, is 
a superb work true to the type of the Sierra Nevadas and a strongly 

22317—17 3 



4 THE PAINTER AND THE NATIONAL PAEKS. 

poetic interpretation of one of the grandest phases of our cr^'stalline 
mountain ranges. Those of us Avho have dwelt for a time in these 
wilds find it hard to pass this picture. The gallery to which it 
belongs has fallen heir to one of the greatest treasures of American 
landscape art. 

The "Awakening of the Grand Canj^on," by Parshall, is a mas- 
terly interpretation of a phase of this marvel of marvels which few 
have sought to represent. The sun strikes the lofty rim of the far- 
away cliffs, Avhile the canyon itself is filled with mist so that the 
observer must search for the gorge and the river as he must search 
for the real gorge and river before the morning sun has thought of 
revealing them. 

My failure to mention other works in detail must not be thought 
of as indicating that many of them are not worthy of mention, for 
every picture in the central group tells its vivid story of the wonders 
of our great West. 

It is entirely natural that one who began exploring in the Rocky 
Mountains 44 years ago and who has Avitnessed the development of 
the great surveys and the inception of the movement for the estab- 
lishment of national parks should take to reminiscing, but I shall 
not weary you by recalling the multitude of scenes and events that 
come to mind. I have sketched perhaps every range and group of 
mountains from Montana to Mexico and have climbed nearly all of 
the great peaks of the ranges and explored the valleys and canyons. 
When I am homesick at all it is for these wilds and especially for 
the upland parks which nature has arranged with more than the 
skill of the landscape gardener. Everywhere there are subjects to 
inspire the painter's brush and at the same time to test his skill. 

I may speak of the Yellowstone Valley where we began our ex- 
plorations in 1872, and recall the inception of the idea of setting 
aside the central portions of this wonderful land as a national park. 
Dr. Hayden, the director of the survey of the Territories and his 
able executive officer, James Stevenson, conceived the idea, and on 
their return to Washington they, with others, urged upon Congress 
the advisability of reserving this great area as a free resort to all the 
people. The paintings of Moran, who accompanied the expedition 
in 1871, were an important factor in bringing the project to a suc- 
cessful issue. 

In those early days many of the physical features of the park were 
without names, and names were freely given for convenience of ref- 
erence in the topographic as well as the geologic work. I had the 
pleasure of naming mountains, valleys, streams, and geysers, but 
did not name the peak which bears ni}^ own name. That was the 
work of Geographer Gannett, but I did not object. A feature of 
particular interest on the east fork of the Yellowstone is Amethyst 



THE PAINTER AND THE NATIONAL PARKS. 5 

Mountain on the marvels of which I made the first report. The face 
of the mountain shelves off in narrow cliffs in which stand out in bold 
relief the trunks of petrified trees, suggesting the columns of a 
hundred ruined temples. The Tertiary forests had been buried one 
over another in the gradually accumulating volcanic debris and thus 
became petrified and the erosion of the valley in subsequent ages 
wore away these partially consolidated formations leaving the trunks 
exposed. Many of these trunks were originally hollow and as petri- 
faction progressed they were filled with crystals of quartz many of 
which have the amethystine hue, and on breaking open the trunks 
the crystals v.ere exposed and easily extracted. Our pack mules 
were loaded to the limit with the remarkable specimens. 

In 1872 our work carried us to Colorado, where several years were 
passed in exploring the great ranges, the features of particular in- 
terest being the conquest of the Mountain of the Holy Cross, myself 
being the first person known to have reached the summit, and the 
valley of the San Juan, on the wonders of which I had the honor of 
making the first report. Moran's great paintings of these subjects 
are well known. 

In 1880 I had mj'^ first look into the Grand Canyon of the Colorado 
River. In company with Maj. Duton, I approached the gorge from 
the north, riding through the deep forest which covers the great 
Kaibab Plateau. As we rode forward we began to catch glimpses 
of the blue through the mesh of tree trunks and foliage, and gradu- 
ally as we approached the rim the blue, which seemed the blue of the 
sky, sank deeper and deeper until we found ourselves hesitating to 
proceed, the impression being strong that we had come to the edge of 
the world. Reaching the edge, the great gorge began to reveal itself, 
and what at first had seemed the blue sky became a vast expanse of 
sculptured plateau fronts, diversified by promontories, isolated 
pyramids, and deep recesses in infinite detail, extending to impene- 
trable depths. To the east the chasm cut the horizon in a great notch 
and the same again far to the west. 

I spent two full days in making a pencil panorama of the canyon, 
my own natural method of expression being the graphic-. Descrip- 
tion is vain. We must depend upon the pictorial art to convey to 
the mind of those Avho can not visit the region some idea, howsoever 
weak, of this greatest wonder of the world. But I can not go on. 
The memories and scenes crowds upon my mind so that I am help- 
less in the face of the task. 

o 



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